Trip of a lifetime brings swine flu to New Zealand

[March 19, 2010]  WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- For 22 New Zealand teenagers, it was the trip of a lifetime: three weeks in Mexico practicing Spanish and visiting the pyramids of Oaxaca and other famous sites.

It ended with 12 of them and their trip leader caught up in a global health scare as the first cases of swine flu in the Asia-Pacific region.

The youths and three teachers from Rangitoto College -- New Zealand's biggest high school with some 2,500 students -- arrived in Mexico City on April 3.

By the time they flew out on April 25, they had visited an ancient silver mine in Zacatecas, archaeological sites in Oaxaca, and the cities of Guanajuato and Puebla, before finishing with four days with host families in Mexico City.

"I wouldn't trade it for the world. It was awesome," Sophie Rice, 15, told New Zealand's National Radio on Wednesday.

That's despite spending the past five days gobbling antiviral drugs under self-imposed quarantine in her home in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city. Rice had a cough and irritated throat but was cleared of swine flu infection. Still, doctors recommended she take Tamiflu and stay at home as a precaution.

Trip leader Michelle Parkinson was not so lucky. She caught swine flu, officials said, and brought it home to her husband Derek, who was also infected.

"I think he would have preferred I'd kept this one to myself," Parkinson told The Associated Press by phone from her voluntary home quarantine.

Officials say 14 New Zealanders have swine flu, though 11 of those cases are based on the assumption that positive tests on three students means the others in the group have it. All had only mild flu symptoms and are responding well to treatment by Tamiflu.

Jamie Berkhan, 16, who tested negative but has flu symptoms, told National Radio she hoped she and her classmates would be well enough to return to school next week.

Besides the 13 in the student group, officials have identified one other case. The person recently returned from North America.

The source of the infection in the New Zealand students has not been confirmed.

The group traveled to the southern state of Oaxaca on April 16 -- the suspected epicenter of the swine flu outbreak -- and spent four days there. The first death believed to have been caused by swine flu was in Oaxaca on April 13.

In their final days in Mexico, some of the students began to cough and ache.

By the time they arrived home early Saturday after an 11-hour flight from Los Angeles, more were feeling ill and there was a media blizzard about swine flu.

"These highly intelligent young people realized very quickly the possibilities of the connection between the flu outbreak in Mexico -- only becoming news in the last days of the last week they were there -- and the fact some of the group were feeling some flu-like symptoms when they returned," school Principal David Hodge said. "They were actually able to connect the dots."

Meanwhile, host families in Mexico City had e-mailed Hodge to say, "No-one's got the flu here, and we're just checking to make sure they (the students) are all right."

Parkinson quickly contacted parents and asked that the students get medical checks. Medical authorities were alerted by lunchtime Saturday.

The group felt responsible for bringing the virus to New Zealand, Hodge said.

"That's an awful feeling as you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you've done everything right," he said.

[Associated Press; By RAY LILLEY]

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